


but one remembers yet

by disastermovie



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Historical References, Hurt No Comfort, Post-Canon, frostyfuntime2k19
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 00:55:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21928672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disastermovie/pseuds/disastermovie
Summary: “From the mutilated state of many of the corpses and the contents of the kettles, it is evident that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last resource—cannibalism—as a means of prolonging existence.”—excerpt from Dr. John Rae’s report on the fate of the Franklin Expedition to the Secretary of the Admiralty (written from Repulse Bay on July 29, 1854)
Relationships: Sophia Cracroft & Lady Jane Franklin, Sophia Cracroft/Captain Francis Crozier
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18
Collections: janky franky's frosty fun time 2k19





	but one remembers yet

**Author's Note:**

> Written for day ten of [Janky Franky's Frosty Funtime 2k19](https://frostyfuntime.tumblr.com/)! Today's prompt was **let it go** , which I decided meant that I should somersault straight over the thin line between _The Terror_ fanfic and historical RPF. Way too much history stuff in the end notes.
> 
> Title from Christina Rossetti's poem, ["One Sea-Side Grave."](https://hellopoetry.com/poem/16126/one-sea-side-grave/)

> _“Some of the bodies had been buried (probably those of the first victims of famine), some were in a tent or tents, others under the boat, which had been turned over to form a shelter, and several lay scattered about in different directions. Of those found on the island, one was supposed to have been an officer, as he had a telescope strapped over his shoulders, and his double-barreled gun lay underneath him._
> 
> _“From the mutilated state of many of the corpses and the contents of the kettles, it is evident that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last resource—cannibalism—as a means of prolonging existence.”_

—excerpt from Dr. John Rae’s report on the fate of the Franklin Expedition to the Secretary of the Admiralty (written from Repulse Bay on July 29, 1854)

* * *

Lady Jane said nothing when she first heard Dr. Rae’s report. She’d had Sophia read it aloud to her as she looked impassively out the window, while Sophia held the paper tightly in her hands, trying to keep her voice from shaking.

It was not until she read the dreaded word that her voice cracked, as did Lady Jane’s resolve. She nearly ripped the letter from Sophia’s hands, suddenly breathing hard. Her eyes flew over the text. Sophia was not prone to vapors, but she felt so faint and wanted desperately to lay down, to close her eyes and wake up in a world where Sir John had no expedition to go on. There would be no reason for Sophia to ask Francis to go with him, then.

That request has haunted her for nine long years; Francis himself will haunt her for many more to come.

She hopes that he was dead and buried long before the men resorted to that “last resource.” She somewhat remembers when news of _Essex_ survivors reached England, nearly every conversation centered around the men’s sorry state, the horror and disgust that they had succumbed to the custom of the sea. Sophia, five years old at the time, hadn’t understood what that meant. Now she is thirty-eight, unmarried, and understands their fate all too well. The _Essex_ was not the first to fall to it and Franklin’s men will not be the last.

Lady Jane was inconsolable after the report, leaving Sophia alone to her own grief. She isn’t a fool; she’d believed Sir Ross four years ago, when his search confirmed what she’d already known. The expedition was a failure, as is each one that follows to find it.

When Lady Jane comes to breakfast the next morning, declaring that they are to leave Orkney for Shetland within the week, Sophia feels resigned.

“The full stop at the end of Britain,” the man at the docks had called Out Stack, when Lady Jane requested a boat to the island. As they stand on it now, Sophia thinks that island is a generous term. Out Stack is nothing more than a great pile of rock jutting out from the water that Britain has claimed for its own. The salt water gets in Sophia’s eyes and throat, but Lady Jane stands resolute a few feet ahead of her, gripping the rocks as to not fall over while she looks somewhere beyond the horizon. Sophia does not have to wonder at what she sees.

She only spoke once over the journey to Shetland. In a hushed voice that belied her rage, Lady Jane wondered at Dr. Rae’s utter _gall_ to accuse the men of the worst sin, something that she couldn’t even say aloud. Plenty other men had found themselves in similar situations without ever resorting to _that_ , she’d declared, though Sophia found that she didn’t much care.

Sophia isn’t sure when she gave up on ever seeing Francis again. It was certainly sometime before Dr. Rae’s letter arrived. She’d admired Lady Jane, once, in her relentless fight against the admiralty as she continued searching for the expedition. Her hope and tenacity were something she tried to pull strength from. Now, Sophia is just tired.

They both know that Sir John was dead well before the men’s food would have ran out, based on the letter from the cairn. Lady Jane knows it to be true, but she’s never quite accepted it, without a body or mode of death to help her grieve. Lady Jane is desperate for a closure that she’ll never achieve. Sophia wonders when she will truly accept the facts: Sir John is long dead, as is Francis, and they did not die heroes. As long as she searches desperately for the answers that she wants instead of the truth in front of them, Lady Jane will never find peace, and she will keep Sophia from ever achieving hers.

The time that she would have worn mourning clothes for Francis has come and gone, though she was never his wife to begin with. She thinks, often, that she would have said _yes_ if he returned; would have said yes back then, if she knew what was to come, that she would lose him forever. Sophia _wants_ to move on, but her aunt won’t let her. This search will drive them both to the grave. Lady Jane refuses to do it alone.

They only have each other now. It comforts neither of them.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Historical notes:** The _Essex_ was an American whaling ship that was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale in 1820. Of the original twenty-men crew, only eight were eventually rescued. In the meantime, seven men were cannibalized. [There's a great episode of Ruining History](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6Duf496Ips) on Buzzfeed that goes over the event, if anyone's interested in learning more.
> 
> Dr. John Rae went on several Arctic expeditions; he was a pretty interesting dude in his own right, respecting Inuit traditions and utilizing their survival methods for his own travels. What he's most relevant for in this fic is his third trip to the Arctic in 1854 to determine the fate of the Franklin expedition. Based on artifacts from the expedition that he got from several Inuit groups he met and these groups' testimonies, he concluded that scurvy and famine killed the men, while the last of the survivors resorted to cannibalism. [You can read his published report here](https://archive.org/details/melancholyfateof00raej/page/n7).
> 
> Rae was publicly ridiculed for what many thought was vilifying the expedition's members and his reputation never fully recovered. Charles Dickens was especially nasty toward him, publicly disparaging him and saying it was far more likely the Inuit had murdered the survivors, or were even responsible for the expedition's failure in the first place. In response to the report, Dickens wrote that "It is impossible to form an estimate of the character of any race of savages from their deferential behaviour to the white man while he is strong. The mistake has been made again and again; and the moment the white man has appeared in the new aspect of being weaker than the savage, the savage has changed and sprung upon him." [You can read his full response to Dr. Rae's report here](http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/arctic/pva342.html) (warning for the exact amount of racism and colonialism you would expect from a dead white guy in 19th century Britain, as well as some questionable rhetoric).
> 
> At the risk of going on a way-too-long tangent on Dr. Rae's career and Dicken's racism, I'll talk real quick about Lady Jane Franklin. She refused to believe Dr. Rae's report, requesting that the admiralty not pay him the reward for discovering the expedition's fate (which the admiralty never did), and spent the rest of her life funding continued expeditions to discover what happened to the men. While she seemed to accept that any survivors were more than likely dead in her letters (at least in the handful that I've read), she never accepted Dr. Rae's conclusions of cannibalism.
> 
> There's some claims that, after reading the report, she traveled from her then-home in Orkney to Out Stack to be as close to her husband as possible. The only source that I could find for this was in _Sandison's Scotland_ by Bruce Sandison, who references _The Island of Unst_ by P. N. Guy, who himself got it from folklorist Jessie Saxby. I can't find _The Island of Unst_ (at least not on Google), but I did find Saxby's book, _Daala-mist; or, Stories of Shetland_ (published in 1876), where she recalls: "The arrival of Lady Franklin and her party, the noble wife's earnest face mixed up with yearning hopes sent from my child-heart after the lost voyagers among Arctic snows, is one of my earliest visions." [You can find the book here](https://archive.org/details/daalamistorstor00saxbgoog/page/n334), though all this really proves is that I did way too much research for a fic shorter than 1k words. This is the only primary source that I could find regarding Lady Jane's visit to Out Stack, so if anyone actually did more research than some frantic Googling on this let me know, but also this is fanfic where historical inaccuracies abound in peace and harmony.
> 
> For what it's worth, historians now accept Dr. Rae's conclusions.
> 
> I'm on tumblr at [diydumpsterdiving](https://diydumpsterdiving.tumblr.com/) if ya wanna yell at me about this fic or history things.


End file.
